The present disclosure relates to security, monitoring, and control devices. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to modular security, monitoring, and control devices and methods.
Numerous types of security, monitoring, and control devices are known. For example, many commercial buildings have access control systems to allow only authorized employees into the building, and even to limit employee access to certain parts of the building. The access control can be an electronic system such as a personal identification number (PIN) input device, a magnetic stripe reader, a proximity reader, and others. These same commercial buildings often have security cameras, smoke detectors, HVAC systems, and employee time card stations. Each of these various security, monitoring, and control devices collects information, and often times makes decisions based on this information.
While the information collected by one of these devices may be useful to other devices, many of the prior art devices can not communicate to one another. This leads to less than optimal decisions or the requirement for duplicative collection of the same data by multiple devices. For example, temperature control systems, burglar alarms, and access control devices are often installed in a common location, but do not exchange information with one another.
For this reason, integrated security, monitoring, and control devices are becoming popular. However, these systems typically require large financial investments to design and install the integrated system. Moreover, such systems often do not communicate with existing systems already in place.
In addition, many prior art devices do not function with more than one technology. As discussed above, many different types of access control systems have been developed. Unfortunately, in order to have an access control device that works with both a PIN input device and a magnetic stripe reader, two separate devices would need to be installed at each point of entrance/exit. Alternately, all of the entrance/exit would need to be outfitted with an expensive dual technology system.
Accordingly, there is a continuing desire for easily modified security, monitoring, and control devices that allow integration of the data among various system components.